Lady Gaga is the new Brittney Spears, but even more like a whore. Miley Cyrus is the new Hillary Duff, but even more retardedly popular and untalented.

Spongebob Squarepants isn't good anymore and neither is the Simpsons, Family Guy, or South Park. Their well went dry years ago, and they still somehow maintain their popularity.

The Jonas Brothers have filled the gap that was left when all the good boy bands broke up, not that Jonas Brothers are good, they just look nice.

A few years ago, out of nowhere, there appeared a monster from the dark that consumed the soul of every teenage girl it came in contact with. It is the enemy of every well respected man and honorable boyfriend that must put up with its existence. It goes by the name Twilight.

Don't ask me, I guess I'm out of it too lol. But yeah, all I know is the next big thing on American Idol/ Dancing with the stars or w/e will be all over Oprah and daytime talkshows/ tabloids. That's the world we live in today. Anime had it's day in the sun (for mainstreme audiences) it didn't last long. Just as Cartoon Network turns it away so does mainstream media, if that's what your asking. Things are moving steadily towards Hulu, which just unveiled their pay service, any way. Cable is yesterday's news... or will be some day soon.

Ishbalan wrote:A few years ago, out of nowhere, there appeared a monster from the dark that consumed the soul of every teenage girl it came in contact with. It is the enemy of every well respected man and honorable boyfriend that must put up with its existence. It goes by the name Twilight.

No fucking joke. Forget music and anime for a second. This shit is taking over the world (it's already taken over America.) This is definitely the biggest thing in the U.S. right now. The consumption of anime dvds and manga doesn't even compare to Twilight, and, in general, any product that has to do with vampires.

Now that Twilight has come along, there is a giant ass section in my book store for all vampire books, and pretty much every other place that sells books somewhere in their store. Most were published after Twilight. So we can all thank Stephenie Meyer for the crap novels that fill store shelves nowadays. No joke. Write a book about vampires and there's a 1 in 1 chance you're gunna get published.

The monstrosity that is Twilight is so fucking vile that I feel ashamed for having even read a sentence in those god forsaken books.

Soul Eater blindsided conventions across the country last year. One day everybody woke up. wen't to their local con, and realized that 1 out of 15 people was cosplaying as a Soul Eater character.http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/ ... u_sama.jpgFunimation tried to capitalize on this, by sending fan-subbers notices to stop subbing Soul Eater. But Funimation didn't actually start releasing Soul Eater merchandise until after the trend had died down a bit. [face-palm moment] Soul Eater is still really popular though.

ummmmm. Best buy and a few other places drastically cut the amount of anime that they sell, so figuring out trends is just a bit harder now. Most people buy their stuff from rightstuf.com, and from what I can see, there is a slow decrease on the amount of stuff that people buy from conventions. Possibly due to the recession (in America) or the fact that most things at cons are cheaper online.

EDIT:Oh and, thanks to Funimation, English dubs are more popular than they use to be. But some companies like Bandai are struggling to make money off of them. According to Bang-Zoom, Bandai has everything riding on Haruhi. Bandai tried to sumul-dub Kurokami last year, didn't make a dime off of it, and delayed the DVD release like 20 times. So everybody is sticking to just simul-casting........which is still pretty good in my book. Oh and, Dattebayo doesn't do bleach or naruto anymore since they are both being officially simul-cated on crunchyroll. Narutards nearly had a panic attack.

My own non-KOR collection is dwindling. I rarely add non-KOR stuff, and I often sell non-KOR stuff when I think I may have to move. This means, unless the series is another one of my top ten, or the item is very rare, I end up not keeping it as long as I actually thought I would when I bought it...

I'm not much into collecting novelties and merchandise, but whatever special edition DVDs I buy that come with free merchandise (Like say the Hellsing OVA busts and artbooks or Gungrave mouse pad) are always nice little perks

I mostly just buy NA DVD releases, and also wall scrolls for old stuff when I can find them. And by mostly I mean on the rare occasion I actually have money. And when I say old stuff I mean like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, even a FF9 wall scroll. Everything is Naruto and Bleach these days...

Well all of my merchandise is kept on one thin (but pretty tall) bookshelf, where my DVDs and soundtracks cover two shelves, and my manga three.I also have a random VHS & a recently-bought DVD of Season 1 of Johnny Bravo in there, but I've been meaning to put those back downstairs sometimes. xD;

Kionon wrote:I'm out of the loop on Western fandom, but what are all the kiddies these days buying? What series and what type of merchandise?

This is in general anime so despite the answers already given I am going to assume you mean specifically anime goods.

My answer would be that simply put the kiddies aren't buying and will not in the future. The incoming generation of fans is the ipod/youtube/facebook generation and are interested more in services than physical goods. They are not the ones who are buying the actual anime DVDs right now and that's why all these companies got in deep shit. It's simply not in this generation's system.

As for anime merchandise no matter how well some stuff sells at a con or at online stores no one is ever going to make enough money on anime merch over here to make a big retail presence chain or a megastore because there is no central shopping repository that the fan community can go to like Akiba in Japan. The USA fan community alone is spread out all over the place.

If you want this thread to be a post about what anime goods or whatnot we bought recently I could supply a few items.

Actually, outlawed, that was exactly what I was asking. I had guessed at that myself, but had no firsthand experience. I wanted people to chip in and tell me just what the dealers' room scenes are like, etc. Figure.fm would seem to suggest that people are buying merchandise still, but maybe not as large a percentage as our generation? Our generation was still very STUFF based, and at least for KOR, I am still very much like that.

Feel free to post latest acquisitions, as it is related, sorta, but you're no more one of the "kiddies" than I am.